Smarsh is a household name in the data archiving industry, providing archiving, compliance, and information management services to the financial industry and government sector. In 2020, it was named leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for enterprise information archiving for the sixth consecutive year.
However, despite its recognized leadership in the industry, Smarsh is not a one-size-fits-all solution. That’s why it’s essential to understand this platform’s potential downsides before committing to it.
To help you make an informed decision, this article will explore:
- Key challenges associated with using Smarsh
- Top five Smarsh competitors
- Factors you should keep in mind when selecting an alternative solution
- Features you should look for
Smarsh Downsides
While Smarsh undeniably offers numerous benefits, its complex, often vague pricing, unavailability of functions, slow search, and lack of robust technical support and documentation are huge deal breakers.
Here are some specific disadvantages Smarsh users complain about:
- Confusing and costly billing — Users report that the platform’s billing system is difficult to understand, with invoices that are not transparent. This can lead to unexpected costs and make it difficult to budget for the service. Large organizations, in particular, can face significant financial setbacks due to unexpected costs that may double their initial projections.
- Restrictive contracts and renewals — Smarsh has been criticized for its long contract terms and lack of flexibility. Users are often locked into year-long agreements with limited options for cancellation or renewal.
- Complex user interface — Some users find this platform difficult to navigate and use, with multiple management locations and confusing workflows. A steep learning curve might prevent users from getting the most out of the service.
- Limited functionalities in the standard package — The biggest drawback of Smarsh is that its standard package comes with limited functionalities, requiring users to pay additionally to get the same capabilities they would otherwise have with competitors’ solutions.
The next section will discuss the best Smarsh alternatives, highlight their advantages, and discuss features that may better suit your business needs and budget.
5 Smarsh Alternatives for Email Archiving
Jatheon Technologies
One of the best-in-class Smarsh competitors, Jatheon is an enterprise information archiving vendor that has been in business since 2004. It lets you archive email, social media, calls, texts, IM, and voice messages.
Praised for its advanced search, smooth import of legacy data, seamless ediscovery, and robust export functionalities, Jatheon specializes in archiving solutions for education, government and healthcare.
Jatheon can be deployed as a cloud, on-premises, and virtual solution.
Jatheon’s AWS-based solution, Jatheon Cloud, comes with an easy-to-use interface that doesn’t require users to have a technical background to be able to use the platform to its full potential.
Besides, Jatheon Cloud has been commended for advanced, proximity, and fuzzy search options, as well as export and bottomless storage.
The on-premise solution, Jatheon Archiving Suite, boasts advanced search capabilities, handling of large exports, and enterprise-grade hardware configuration. An added benefit is free hardware refreshment every 4 years, as well as reliable cloud backup and 24/7 tech support.
As for its downsides, Jatheon’s SharePoint and file archiving capabilities are still in development.
Storage and pricing: Jatheon has 6 appliance models ranging from 6 to 96TB. For detailed pricing, contact sales.
Barracuda
What users like about Barracuda is that it offers a set of complementary services, such as network and application security, firewalls, email security and data backup. Add this to its archiving capabilities, it’s easy to see why Barracuda is among the leading Smarsh competitors in the market.
Its main feature, Barracuda Message Archiver, lets users expand storage capacities through stackable appliances. Another forte is that users can run combined searches. Among its strong points, Barracuda allows users to easily access their archive via mobile and desktop, and comes with free hardware refresh (depends on the pricing plan). And in case you have a lot of data, Barracuda offers cloud storage capacities which you can use as a second-tier storage.
What customers complain about is the search speed and load times, which can often be too low. Plus, the export of large amounts of data can be an issue, which is critical for large companies or companies with a lot of accounts. Some users find the user interface counter-intuitive.
Storage and pricing: Barracuda’s storage ranges from 500GB to 66TB. The pricing is available upon request.
Intradyn
In the game since the early 2000s, Intradyn offers archiving solutions for email, social media and text messages. Unlike Smarsh, Intradyn can be deployed as an on-premise, cloud or virtual solution, which allows companies to tailor their email management to their business needs and technical capabilities.
Intradyn’s flagship solution, Email Archiver, comes with robust ediscovery and compliance capabilities. Users often quote a seamless user interface, the functionality of retention policies, backup and redaction.
As for the downsides, Intradyn’s biggest drawback is reliance on stubbing for storage reduction and lack of direct export to PST. This is most pronounced when there is a need to export a large number of emails to PST, as due to the lack of this functionality, users might need to purchase a third-party app to alleviate the process.
Storage and pricing: Intradyn might not be the best option for large companies looking for an on-prem solution due to limited maximum storage capacity (8TB) and the fact that its hardware doesn’t always score high on the reliability scale. Pricing is available upon request.
Microsoft (Office) 365
Microsoft’s archiving solution, Exchange Online, integrates smoothly with the existing Microsoft infrastructure, allowing companies to have a comprehensive solution that covers not only archiving, but other functions as well.
However, the lack of specialization in email archiving can result in some subpar functionalities, such as the default limited search results. It currently stands at 250 results, which is often insufficient for large companies or large scale litigation cases. Another downside is the search function which can’t compare to the robustness of search functions provided by other Smarsh alternatives on the list. Customers also cite legacy data import and large exports as a downside of the Microsoft 365 archiving tool.
Storage and pricing: Microsoft 365 can work well for smaller companies that can’t afford to buy business software. The subscription includes the complete Office package, with services available for PCs, tablets, and phones.
The Exchange Online archiving tool starts at $3 per mailbox per month. A downside is that organizations pay for both legacy and active mailboxes. This significantly increases costs, as even when an employee leaves, you still have to pay for their mailbox, although it’s not actively in use.
DataCove
DataCove email archiver was built to meet all the ediscovery needs of organizations large and small, aside from taking care of email archiving requirements. The solution is built by Tangent, one of the industry’s pioneers.
DataCove’s biggest advantages are a user-friendly interface, search functionality that supports fuzzy and federated search, as well as the speed and ease of deployment.
What might cause reluctance when weighing the purchasing decision is that DataCove’s lower-end appliances are SATA-based. This means that in terms of essential system features, including speed, cost optimization, and data protection, SATA controllers can reduce the system reliability and efficiency. Another issue is that DataCove’s archiving solution requires using a separate tool for import/export, which makes the process more tedious.
Storage and pricing: DataCove’s storage capacity is up to 12TB. As for the pricing, it varies considerably depending on the number of years prepaid and the type of deployment. To get the estimate, contact the vendor directly.
Summary of the Main Points
- Despite being a popular archiving and compliance solution, Smarsh isn’t the best option for all organizations.
- Its downsides include a complex pricing structure, restrictive contracts and renewals, difficult-to-navigate user interface, and limited functionalities in the standard package.
- Larger organizations can easily end up paying more than they initially intended due to the lack of pricing transparency and insufficient functionality in the standard pricing plan.
- When choosing a Smarsh alternative, pay attention to its scalability, pricing, and storage size. Also, choose a solution that includes ediscovery, advanced, proximity, and fuzzy search options, user-friendly interface, as well as comprehensive documentation.
- Based on these factors, the best Smarsh alternatives are Jatheon Technologies, Barracuda, Intradyn, Microsoft 365, and DataCove.
Read Next:Office 365 Email Archiving: 8 Major Disadvantages |
